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Isaac Newton worked on optics throughout his research career, conducting various experiments and developing hypotheses to explain his results. [7] He dismissed Descartes' theory of light because he rejected Descartes’ understanding of space, which derived from it. [ 8 ]
Isaac Newton suggests the existence of an aether in the Third Book of Opticks (1st ed. 1704; 2nd ed. 1718): "Doth not this aethereal medium in passing out of water, glass, crystal, and other compact and dense bodies in empty spaces, grow denser and denser by degrees, and by that means refract the rays of light not in a point, but by bending them gradually in curve lines? ...
Newton's corpuscular theory of light was gradually succeeded by the wave theory. It was not until the 19th century that the quantitative measurement of dispersed light was recognized and standardized. As with many subsequent spectroscopy experiments, Newton's sources of white light included flames and stars, including the Sun.
Isaac Newton contended that light is made up of numerous small particles. This can explain such features as light's ability to travel in straight lines and reflect off surfaces. Newton imagined light particles as non-spherical "corpuscles", with different "sides" that give rise to birefringence.
Sir Isaac Newton (25 December 1642 – 20 March 1726/27 [a]) was an English polymath active as a mathematician, physicist, astronomer, alchemist, theologian, and author who was described in his time as a natural philosopher. [5] Newton was a key figure in the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment that followed. [6]
Spectroscopy began with Isaac Newton splitting light with a prism; a key moment in the development of modern optics. [5] Therefore, it was originally the study of visible light that we call color that later under the studies of James Clerk Maxwell came to include the entire electromagnetic spectrum. [6]
1676 – Ole Rømer: Rømer's determination of the speed of light traveling from the moons of Jupiter. 1678 – Christiaan Huygens mathematical wave theory of light, published in his Treatise on Light; 1687 – Isaac Newton: Newton's laws of motion, and Newton's law of universal gravitation [8]
The curvature of space-time replaced Newton's universal law of gravitation. According to Einstein, gravitational force in the normal sense is an illusion caused by the geometry of space. The presence of a mass causes a curvature of space-time in the vicinity of the mass, and this curvature dictates the space-time path that all freely-moving ...